Navigating the new iOS 7 for Apple

Does the new iOS 7 for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch have your head spinning? Never fear, the following 31 helpful navigation tips are here, originally published on Macworld.com by Karen Haslam and Ashleigh Allsopp.

Turn off Background App Refresh

With the new multitasking feature, apps automatically refresh in iOS 7 so they’re updated and ready when you want to use them. While a great feature, they will suck up your data, as well as your battery life. To turn off this feature, go to Settings > General and slide the Background App Refresh to off.

Close running apps in multitasking

Pressing and holding a running app in order to close it is a thing of the past. Now, to close a running app in iOS 7, double tap the home button and drag the page preview up. This is less time consuming than iOS 6 and allows for closing two or three apps at a time.

AirDrop

By activating AirDrop in the Control Panel, you can easily share photos with your contacts. By going to the photo you want to share, tapping the Share icon and selecting AirDrop, you’ll be able to select which contact you want to share with (they’ll then receive a notification that you want to share a photo, at which point they can either Accept or Decline), as well as anyone else in close proximity with AirDrop set up.

Please note: AirDrop can be a battery drain since it uses Bluetooth so you might want to turn the function off when you’re done using it.

Share a location in Maps using AirDrop

Want to let someone you’re meeting know where you’ll be? Now you can do so through AirDrop. With AirDrop turned on, go to Maps, tap the share button and tap the contact you want to share with.

Share Moments

In iOS 7, photos are sorted into Moments, which makes sharing groups of photos easier. Go to the moment you want to share and select the blue Share button. From there you can either share the current moment or several moments. If there are a few photos, you can share through email, message, Flickr, Facebook or iCloud. If there are a lot of photos you will only be able to share through message or iCloud.

Skip to last year’s photos

Finding old photos is much easier in iOS 7 than it was in iOS 6. Now you can tap Years in your Photos app and find the year you want to view. From there, you will be taken to the earliest photos taken in that grouping.

Set up Photo Stream

Photo Stream allows you to upload photos to the iCloud as you take them. Photos will automatically sync to your other iCloud devices once connected to WiFi. Go to Settings > Photos & Camera and slide the My Photo Stream to green.

You can share a Photo Stream, too, by tapping Shared in the Photos app and tapping the plus button to add contacts you want to share with.

Take a still while video recording

A white button will appear as soon as you begin recording a video. Tap that white button anytime you want to take a still photo. The stills will have the same 16:9 aspect ratio as your video, rather than the lesser quality 4:3 aspect ratio in standard photo mode.

Take a panorama

In the Camera app, swipe left until you get to Pano mode. Once you tap the shutter, move your phone in the direction of the arrow until you fill up the bar or tap the shutter again.

Take a square shot

Open the Camera app, swipe left once to get to Square mode and take a pic. It’s that easy.

Edit a photo

Apple’s new Photos app allows you to apply edits by going to the photo you want to edit and tapping the Edit button in the top right. From there you’ll be in edit mode where you can auto enhance, add one of eight new filters, crop, rotate or reduce red-eye. Another great feature is that even after you’ve saved the edited photo, you can still go back in and revert to the original.

Use Burst Mode

Burst Mode is great for taking a series of photos at rapid-fire speed. Perfect for sporting events or for taking pictures of anything in motion, to operate in Burst Mode, tap and hold the shutter in your Camera app.

“Play it again, Sam.”

While the Music app has gotten a makeover in iOS 7, the repeat album option seems nowhere to be found. Don’t worry, it’s still around. In the Music app, go to the More tab in the bottom right, scroll until you find the album you want to listen to, open it to get to the track list. Click a song, at which point you will see Repeat in the bottom left corner with a list of options, one of which is Repeat Album. Tap and enjoy a particular album again and again.

Access the spirit level

iOS 7 is moonlighting as a general contractor. To help with your DIY construction projects, open Compass and swipe from left to right to calibrate. From there, you have two functionalities to choose from. The first is to place the phone on the surface you’re working with, say, for instance, a shelf, and once the perfect decline, incline or equilibrium is achieved, the screen will turn green. The second functionality is to be able to measure when something is perfectly perpendicular. Simply stand the phone or tablet upright.

View list view in calendar

Wondering where your List view of appointments went in iOS 7? They’re still there. In Calendar, tap the magnifying glass and your list will populate for the coming days and weeks.

See daily, weekly, monthly calendar appointments

The Calendar app in iOS 7 will show you your appointments for the day when you first open the app. To see how the rest of your week looks, tap the date bar at the top to toggle between days. To look at your entire month, tap the month in the upper left corner. A grey dot will appear beneath the dates where you have appointments.

To see a few days’ worth of appointments, turn the phone so you’re looking at it in Landscape mode, and, as mentioned above, you can tap the magnifying glass in order to activate List view where you can search for appointments or simply scroll through an endless list.

We will continue to look at more tips and tricks for iOS 7 next month.